Breakdown of Kallein veistos olisi piilotettu kammioon.
olla
to be
kallis
expensive
piilottaa
to hide
kammio
the chamber
veistos
the sculpture
Questions & Answers about Kallein veistos olisi piilotettu kammioon.
How do we form the conditional perfect passive seen in olisi piilotettu?
The conditional perfect passive is made of two parts. The auxiliary verb is always olisi (the active third-person singular conditional of the verb olla). The main verb takes the past passive participle form, which is piilotettu for the verb piilottaa (to hide). Notice that the auxiliary verb is not in a passive form itself.
Why is the object veistos in the nominative case rather than the genitive?
In Finnish passive sentences, a total or complete object is put into the nominative case instead of the genitive-accusative. Since the entire sculpture would have been hidden, veistos appears in its basic nominative form.
The translation says 'in the chamber', so why does the Finnish sentence use the illative case kammioon (into the chamber) instead of the inessive kammiossa?
Finnish focuses on the movement of placing the item into its hiding spot. The verb piilottaa (to hide) requires the illative case (the 'into' case) for the location. You are hiding the sculpture into the chamber.
How does the word kallis (expensive) become kallein?
Kallein is the superlative form meaning 'most expensive'. For adjectives ending in -is, like kallis or kaunis, you form the nominative superlative by dropping the -is and adding -ein.
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